Hardest Road to Travel
by LadySilver
Summary: In the days after the fire, all Laura wanted to do was to get Derek and herself as far away from Beacon Hills, as fast as possible. Then the car ran out of gas.


_A/N: Written for crazyfoolstiney for the rarewomen fest on LJ. Comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated._

**Hardest Road to Travel**

The car ran out of gas on a highway in Wisconsin after nearly four days of driving.

Laura heard the stutter in the engine as the car gave up. She used the last of the vehicle's momentum to ease it to the side of the road with a soft, defeated noise of her own.

The wheels crunched over the mix of gravel and ice, and the belated smells of exhaust and manure and body odor that she'd been deliberately not noticing for the last four states crashed over her.

She was exhausted to the bone, yet so wound up that her pulse pounded in her jaw and throbbed through her head. Peeling her fingers from the vinyl of the steering wheel that they'd been clenching for hundreds of miles took concentration and effort.

Next to her sat her brother Derek, his arms crossed defiantly over the lacrosse jersey he still wore, his face pointed resolutely out the window. He'd done nothing but stare out the window, his body locked in its posture since they'd fled California. He hadn't changed his jersey before they'd left and was now so far past ripe that they'd long crossed into rotten.

He didn't seem to notice.

She locked the tears that threatened behind a reserve of willpower that was already strained and cracking and shut the car off, pocketing the keys. Her jeans felt filthy to the touch and the way they rubbed against her unshaven legs felt like little bugs were crawling around inside them. "Get out of the car," she told her brother. "We're going to have to walk."

Derek didn't respond for long enough that she thought he might not have heard her. Then, as if it were his own idea, he popped the car door open and stepped out into the bitter cold night. Snow was banked along the edge of the road and a sharp wind cut across it, sending drifts back over the main highway that often obscured the lane lines. Traffic was thin on the road, and thinner this time of night.

Laura pulled tight her thrift-store coat, a purchase that had swallowed the last of the cash she'd been able to extract from her credit card before it had stopped working. The cost now seemed like a wasted expense. The wind found every gap in the coat's seams and worked its way inside. Only seconds in the open air and Laura started to shiver. "Come on," she said. "We have to keep moving. I think there's a town up ahead." The constant wind tried to grab her words and blow them away.

Again, Derek didn't respond except to shrug on his coat and to heft his sports bag over his shoulder. He bowed his head against the cold and started to walk.

All they owned was the car, the clothes on their bodies, and the contents of Derek's school lockers, and now even the car was no use. One more piece of their lives left behind. They could try to come back for it in the morning, but without money for gas, it hardly seemed worth the effort. Besides, the license plates would be traced by then, if they hadn't been already.

Laura's step picked up.

Practical considerations of the weather aside, Laura knew they were being followed. She'd felt the eyes on her every time they stopped for gas, every time they'd pulled over to extract what sustenance they could from wayside vending machines and fast food garbage cans.

She knew they should shift. Their wolf forms would provide more protection from the cold and help them move faster, see better, but she couldn't. She couldn't bring herself to try on the new form that awaited her when she shifted, the new mantle of power that was hers to use despite the cost of its bequeathal.

They were living like animals, she thought, while being hunted like animals. And the irony was that the one solution she couldn't bring herself to enact was to draw on her animal side.

Being werewolves is what had gotten her family killed. Though she didn't have reason to think that the fire was anything except an ill-timed coincidence, she knew that it wasn't. All her life, she'd been warned that hunters were a threat. She'd been rehearsed in action plans for hunter attacks at home the way she and her fellow classmates were drilled in earthquake survival at school.

"If anything ever happens to us," she remembered her mother saying, "disappear. Go as far away as fast as you can, and disappear."

"How will I know?" she asked back. She'd still been in school at the time, which cut her off from access to her family all day long. Anything bad enough to warrant acting on the order would also be bad enough to prevent anyone from notifying her.

"You'll know," her mother answered cryptically. "When it does—"

And Laura shuddered then, because the _when_ rolled so casually off her mother's tongue.

"—When it does, your survival is more important than ours. Do you understand?"

Laura didn't, but she'd nodded because her mother had clasped their hands together and the little muscles all over her face twitched with such intensity that Laura couldn't stand to be in that discussion anymore.

Though the directions hadn't included the order to hide, Laura understood that it was implicit.

And she knew that the best way to hide was to blend in. To become the human she'd always pretended to be.

So that was what they were going to do. She and Derek, both.

Better, she thought, to freeze to death than to be burned alive.  
Her long brown hair blew wildly around her face as she walked, the unwashed strands slapping against her skin and neck. With every minute that passed, the temperature seemed to drop more and she waited for her hair to turn into icy whips.

This far from civilization, the sky was a thick black, the stars intense pinpricks of light against it. Under any other circumstances, she would have stopped to admire them. Tonight, she could only wish for their replacement with a ceiling and strips of buzzing fluorescents.

A glance at her brother showed that he was trudging as close to bank of snow as he could get, as far from her as he could get. His gym shoes and the cuffs of his jeans were soaked through. She didn't know how he had the motivation to keep going; his self-blame radiated off him in waves, and she wanted to reassure, but she didn't know how.

And she didn't know why.

Their family was dead. But it hadn't been his fault.

Not anymore than it was hers.

Laura slapped at her cheeks, trying to bring some feeling back into them. Her hands felt thick and clumsy. Her eyes stung from the cold. They were never going to make it. The next town, wherever it might be, was too far away and the road was too long.

A bright light crested the slight hill behind them, coming up fast. She turned toward it stupidly, knowing even as she did that she could that light could be the hunters finally closing in on the two strays. "Derek," she tried to say, only her voice didn't want to emerge. If he noticed the light, he ignored it. His steps continued to carry him down the road.

The headlights grew brighter and Laura had to twist her head away so they wouldn't reflect off her eyes, an old habit, and one she wouldn't have remembered to follow had her father not drilled it into her from even before it mattered. A moment later, a rusty red pickup truck pulled to a stop next to her.

The window rolled down and a dark face appeared in the opening. "That your car back there?" the passenger asked. Her voice still had a twinge of youth.

Laura nodded and swiped uselessly at the hair blowing across her face.

"We got room to give you a ride if you want it," she offered. She blew out a long breath that froze as soon as it hit the air in a thick stream of white. "Damn, it's cold. You better get in. The temp's gonna drop another 20 tonight. No one needs to be out in this."

Another, slightly darker face, appeared next to the first. A baseball cap perched low over his eyes. "He with you?" the new guy asked, hooking a thumb in roughly Derek's direction.

Again, Laura nodded. It was the only response she could manage.

She was so cold.

As much as she wanted to crawl into one of the snow banks behind her, she could feel the tendrils of heat from the trucks' heater and it tugged at her last desire to keep moving. More, it enticed her with the promise of getting Derek someplace safe. Even if she couldn't protect him from the hunters forever, maybe she could buy him enough time to grow into his abilities so that he could protect himself. That was her duty now.

"It'll be a tight fit, but I figure you two could stand to share some body heat. Come on. Next town's not for miles, and there's nothing open there anyway."

Laura closed her eyes, fearing for a second that they were going to freeze shut in that interval, and tried to sense the teens' motivations. She'd been working on that with her mother, but the delicate interplay of senses was one she had been struggling with, and that was in ideal circumstances. All she could sense now was the numbing cold and a long, twisting gurgle in her stomach from hunger.

She took a step toward the vehicle, and that was all the answer the teens needed.

It took a few tortuous moments to coordinate getting everyone out and in and arranged, but then the heater came on full blast and the truck lurched forward. The miniscule backseat of the truck crushed her hard against her brother, yet he still hadn't said anything. She had never felt more disconnected, more distant from him than that moment.

This wasn't the Derek she'd known for sixteen years, the one who filled every space he was in with his—sometimes overblown—confidence, who talked and offered sarcastic rejoinders for comments that he felt were too stupid to merit any other response, of which others, especially herself, seemed to make many.

She supposed that she was as recognizable to him now as he was to her.

The truck was no sooner back on the road when Laura's teeth started to chatter. Violent shivering spread through her whole body and she reflexively curled in on herself to gather any warmth she could find. Again she thought of shifting to her wolf form despite the two strangers in the car and what they would see. Again, she had to remind herself that she was no longer that person.

"Do you need to go to a hospital?" the girl in the passenger seat asked. Worry roiled off her.

Laura shook her head. Regardless of her vows, the hospital was still not a place where her kind belonged.

She smelled doubt and then tentative relief, and then heard the girl shift against the cloth seat.

"So, I'm Jeri," she said, "and that's Steve." Steve raised a quick hand in acknowledgement, then slapped it right back on the steering wheel. "He's probably not going to say much," Jeri provided, as if she needed to point out that on icy roads, at night, Steve's attention needed to be on keeping the truck safely traveling to its destination. Wherever that might be.

Introductions made, Jeri continued twisting in her seat, and then she tossed something onto Laura's lap. Through her shivering, she recognized the object as Jeri's thick winter jacket. It was warm and heavy with her scent. Laura pulled it close, hugging it greedily. After a second, she spread it as far across both her and Derek's laps as it would stretch. "Thanks," she said.

The truck dropped into silence and slowly Laura realized that Jeri was waiting for her passengers to supply their names. This would have been a good time for Derek to chime in, but he had once again retreated to whatever place he had found in his head that cut him off from everyone around him.

A part of Laura bristled at that, and kept bristling.

While she understood that she had to be strong for both of them now, it was increasingly starting to tick her off that Derek couldn't be bothered to at least _try_ to carry some of the psychological burden. All they had left was each other, and if either was going to make it, they needed to be there _for_ each other, as well.

The truck's wheels crunched over the ice for a long time before Steve cleared his throat and Jeri made a funny noise like she'd been caught sneaking into the house past curfew. "Sorry," she said, at last, as if realizing that her passengers might have a reason that they weren't revealing their names. "I was just trying to be friendly."

"It's OK," Laura replied, even though she knew she was the one who should be apologizing.

Jeri turned toward her, as if to assess the sincerity of her answer on her face. Without the interior lights on, Laura doubted she could see anything worthwhile. Nevertheless, she reached through the gap in the front seats and touched Laura's knee. The movement was tentative and brief, yet conveyed nothing but patience.

Steve spoke up then. "I'm guessing youse don't know where you're going and probably youse don't have much money, either?" He had an accent that was strange to Laura's ears, and she wanted to ask where he was from, but decided not to since she wasn't willing to supply a reciprocal answer.

"Not really," Laura answered. She'd pointed the car toward Wisconsin because, well, she didn't have a reason. It seemed like a place no one would choose to go, much less a girl from California. Derek, of course, had offered no input. Then, because that wasn't right, she amended her answer to "Madison."

At the border, she'd discovered that a major university was less than 100 miles away and suddenly she had a real destination, and one that she could pretend she'd been aiming for all along. The more she drove, the more perfect the destination became in her mind. Two more new faces at a university of over 40,000 people, right at the start of the spring semester, would never get remarked upon. Even their California drivers' licenses wouldn't elicit a comment.

With her eye on the already-red-lining gas gauge, she'd started praying that they'd be able to get all the way there before the car quit.

It wasn't her week for prayers, apparently.

Steve nodded as if he'd expected her to say that. "Runaways?" he asked, though it might not have been a question.

Jeri raised her hand as if to punch him in he arm, her turn to reprimand him for being too nosy. She stopped short and patted him gently on the shoulder instead. "You don't have to answer that," she said.

Laura looked away, knowing as well as they did that that was an answer. "I'm over 18," she supplied. Then, realizing that that could be taken the wrong way, she added, with a vague handwave at Derek, "and he's my brother."

"How funny!" Jeri said, like this was the first time she'd met someone with a sibling. "I have a brother, you have a brother." Now she did give Steve's arm a tap. He shook it out of the way and scowled at her.

"Driving," he reminded her.

"If that's what you call it," Jeri quipped.

Laura felt envy curl through her at their easy camaraderie. Under the coat, she slid a hand over to touch Derek's leg, hoping to remind him that they used to be like that, too.

He winced away.

She missed whatever Jeri said next because under his breath Derek said, "You should have left me there." It was the first thing she'd heard him say in days. His voice was rough with disuse, the sounds hard to make out over the blowing heater, even with her advanced hearing.

"You know I couldn't do that," she answered, equally quiet. This wasn't a conversation for the people in the front seat to overhear.

"I could have helped."

"You would have gotten killed." Laura cut a glance at him. The tense lines of his posture had only hardened more. "You still have a lot to learn."

Derek scowled at that. He didn't like being reminded of how late he'd come into his werewolf heritage and how much difficulty he'd been having mastering it. "You're not in charge of me," he argued.

With a sigh, she reminded him of the harshest truth: "Yes, I am."

Once again, he turned his back to her and resumed his obstinate staring out the window.

Laura slumped back into seat, defeated from this latest small battle between them. The bristling hairs of his shaved head weren't worth trying to talk to, but now she had a new distraction: Her feet had turned from numbness to pins and needles.

Seeking to ease the unusual discomfort, she tried to stomp them in the small floor well of the backseat. One of her feet clunked against something hard that had been shoved up under the driver's seat. A familiar bitter smell wafted out, and she froze.

Her claws began prickling on the tips of her fingers and it was harder to keep them from emerging than ever before. "You have a gun," she spoke, trying to keep the suspicions that raced through her mind from showing in her voice. Were these teens hunters? Had she, in what she thought was a desperate move to keep Derek alive, walked them right into a trap?

Jeri laughed. "Yeah," she added. "Everyone around here does."

Laura doubted that, but she wasn't going to argue. Headlights of a car passing in the oncoming lane briefly lit the interior of the truck. The fabric was shabby, the vinyl worn in places and starting to wear through. The teens in the front seat looked no older than Laura was, and Jeri was probably closer to Derek's age. While she knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving, if these two were anything other than regular kids, they could give lessons on the disguise.

"It's for hunting," Steve supplied.

"I know it's illegal to keep it in the truck," Jeri explained, "but I'm not about to leave it laying around where my lil sis can get it. She's been so jealous since I got it and has just been _itching_ to steal it from me."

"You like to hunt?" Laura asked, ignoring the last part. She had Derek had never had enough in common for her things to be of interest to him, or his to her. "My dad used to take us hunting," she added, wistfully. It was different, she knew, because the Hales' version of the sport didn't use guns. But it seemed important to her in that moment to follow through on this small connection.

"Mine, too!" Jeri chirped. She sounded so excited to have finally found something to talk about that her next words spilled out. "I've been going out since I was a kid. It was such a big deal to finally get my license when I turned twelve. I finally bayged my first deer last year. Have you ever bayged a deer?"

After a beat, Laura compensated for Jeri's vowels. Bagging, that was the word, and 'no,' Laura wanted to say. She'd never bagged a deer. She'd slaughtered one, though. Ripped its throat out with her teeth. Laura allowed a small smile. Deer, raccoons, rabbits. She'd been trained to detect and stalk all the varieties of prey that inhabited the Beacon Hills Forest Preserve. "Yeah," she said, instead. "I prefer the smaller animals, though." She hesitated for a second, turning over her reason for her preference in her head to make sure it didn't give anything away, then added, "I like how rabbit tastes the best."

Jeri offered a knowing chuckle. "Venison's great right after the harvest, but I know what you mean. By December I'm sick of it and ready for anything else."

"See," Steve concluded. "We're not dangerous."

From beside her, she heard Derek speak, for the first time loudly enough for everyone to hear. "How do you know we're not?"

Jeri's laugh now was high and strung tight with nerves, like she was suddenly realizing how stupid it was to pick up strangers. She rubbed the back of her neck, contemplating. Laura saw the dark lines of her profile change as she looked up at the truck's roof, for the first time not even trying to look at Laura while she talked to her. "You might be. I hope you're not, but ya might be."

"Doesn't that worry you?" Laura asked. Her fingers still prickled and she thought about how easily she could form her claws and eviscerate both the teens, and how little protection that gun offered them, even if one of them could get to it in time.

Then, once more, she remembered vividly why she couldn't do that. She couldn't allow herself or her brother to become what the people who hunted them already believed them to be. She and Derek weren't monsters and they couldn't let being hunted make them forget that. The remembered sensation of the deers' flesh giving way beneath her claws felt devoid of all satisfaction now, and she could only feel remorse for all the animals she'd killed and sadness that they hadn't been able to run fast enough.

"It's a risk," Jeri conceded. "The way I see it, I'd rather take a chance to help someone than to be safe and let people suffer."

Steve snorted softly like he'd heard all this before, but kept his attention on his driving. Snow had started to fall outside, adding to the slick on the roads and giving Laura the disconcerting impression that they were driving into nothing. Steve turned the wipers on. They swished over the windshield in a hypnotic rhythm, leaving wet streaks behind.

Laura watched the wipers for awhile, mulling over what Jeri had said. Her exhaustion soon began catching up to her and she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She almost didn't notice when Steve eased the truck onto an exit ramp.

"Where are you taking us," Laura asked, at last, speaking through the dim sleep haze that had started to settle over her. It occurred to her that she should have asked that question a long time ago. Then it occurred to that the answer didn't really matter. What better way to disappear than to not know where she was going.

"There's a gas station up ahead," Steve commented as he guided the truck around a sharp bend. The wheels slid against the surface, for a moment losing their traction entirely. Laura clutched at the seat, her claws biting in as if to send a message to the wheels about what to do. Adrenaline surged through her, wiping away all tiredness. She sat up straight and clutched at Derek as if that could ever be enough.

With a jounce of the wheels, the traction caught and the truck resumed its forward travels. "It has showers for the truckers and youse can get some food," Steve added.

Jeri glanced at a partially snow-covered road sign as it seemed to float by in the darkness. The names on it meant nothing to Laura, but Jeri perked up, a sudden extra thump in her heartbeat. "We're here," she said, then, "My girlfriend works there. I'll let her know to treat you right." Laura could hear the dismissal in her voice. The clock was winding down on the brief friendship the two girls had forged, and soon it would be time to walk away as if they'd never met.

"Thanks," Laura answered, trying to decide if there was any polite way to ask if there was a place they could sleep. She decided there wasn't. She and Derek would have to figure out that next part after they dealt with a few more urgent concerns. She couldn't owe the two strangers more, didn't dare owe them more. The less they knew, the less they could tell.

The first scatterings of buildings appeared, looming up along the side of the road. They were shabby and old looking, all the windows darkened. If Laura was careful, she and Derek could slip in and slip out of town before anyone knew they'd been here.

The gas station appeared in a wash of bright white light that reflected through the falling snow. Steve turned the truck into the parking lot and pulled to a diagonal stop up near the doors. No other cars were there and no tire tracks marred the fine layer of white on the ground. "You'll be OK here," he said. "The place is open all night and the food's decent."

Without turning the engine off, he got out of the truck and pulled the seat forward for Laura to exit. On the other side, Jeri made room for Derek to get out.

The burst of cold air broke over Laura's body, more painful now after the intense warmth inside the truck. Laura stumbled around to Jeri, intent on concluding their arrangement so she could get back into shelter. "You didn't have to stop for us," Laura commented, holding out the teen's coat.

Jeri offered a melancholic smile. "Keep it." In the bright lights, Laura could see her face clearly for the first time, though all it would later turn out that she would remember was the scattering of black freckles across the girl's cheeks and the empathy in her brown eyes. Then Jeri leaned forward, brushing her mouth close to Laura's ear and added in a whisper, "There some money in the pocket." She straightened up quickly, as if to deny what she'd done and pushed past Laura to head inside.

Laura swallowed hard, her long held-back tears once again threatening. So many gestures of kindness from one person were going to be the last straw for her.

Derek shoved his hands in his pockets and, once again hunching into the cold, stalked away. At least, Laura thought, he had the sense to go in, even if he was going to make sure she understood with every step how much he loathed doing what she told him.

"He's got a lot of anger," Steve commented into the air. His breath puffed out white and smelling of garlic and cigarettes.

"We both do," Laura said, surprised not only at that moment of candor, but that it was Steve she was confessing to.

Steve tugged his baseball cap lower. The cold didn't seem to bother him at all as he stood in the parking lot, his lips pursed, thinking. "We won't tell," he offered, at last.

"It's safer for you that way," Laura confirmed. Her fingers curled into the soft down of the jacket and the start of a new life that it signified.

Steve nodded. "Figured as much." He forced out a long gust of air through his nose. "Just tell me, is the danger from you or from the thing that's making youse run? No, wait, don't answer. Wouldn't want to hafta lie to my folks and they'd be pissed if they thought I wasn't taking good care of Jeri."

"Thanks for the ride," Laura said, instead, a part of her hoping that, wherever her parents were now, they were happy with how she was taking care of Derek. Trying to live entirely as humans did was fraught with dangers she'd never fully understood before. Still didn't. It had worked out this time. She and Derek had so much to figure out. She'd always be his sister. If only she could get him to be her brother.

"No problem," Steve replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, like it really had been no big deal and not the first positive thing that had happened to Laura since her life had been destroyed in flames. He hesitated, like he wanted to say something else, then made another dismissive wave, brushing it away, and went to join his sister.

Laura started toward the door after them, and then paused. Turning back, she looked at the ground and the four sets of footprints that scuffed the snow.

Catching her long hair in her hands to keep it out of the way, she, for the first time, allowed the start of the shift. Her vision turned red, the spectra of light she could perceive widening, and she peered out into the blowing snow. All she saw was cold and empty, which, for the moment, meant safety. She could still feel the eyes watching her, the prickle along her neck that someone was following.

Miles down the road, her car sat abandoned, one more identifying mark cut away. It might be hours, with luck days, before anyone got around to running the plates and trying to track down its passengers: the two kids from California who'd wandered away in a snowstorm. She wrapped her fingers around the warm metal of the keys in her pocket, thinking about how free she'd felt the first time she'd touched them.

Withdrawing her hand, she took Jeri's jacket by the sleeves and swept its hem across the ground, erasing the footprints. The falling snow would soon cover even those marks.

Tomorrow she and Derek would pick a different direction and keep running. They had a long way to go, and learning to disappear was going to take a lot of practice.

END


End file.
